KEY POINTS:
Rating: * * *
She might be the daughter of folkie Kate McGarrigle and famously scathing singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright, and sister of extravagantly ambitious Rufus, but on her self-titled 2005 debut album, Martha Wainwright had a lyrical frankness and dramatic delivery all her own. Especially when it came to addressing her dear old dad.
Unfortunately, this album doesn't carry on where the first left off. It ups the lushness in its arrangements _ with guest turns from Rufus, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, the Band's Garth Hudson and Pete Townshend _ and increases the filler-factor with pointless covers of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd's See Emily Play and the Eurythmics' Love is a Stranger.
Of her own songs, many seem weighed down by the apparent need to build them up into something other than the acoustic singer-songwriter tracks they started out as. There are exceptions _ like the bitterness wrapped up in the dreamy pop lilt of You Cheated Me, the similarly anthemic Comin' Tonight which comes on like Kate Bush singing Springsteen, the breathy histrionics of Hearts Club or the dark PJ Harvey-like dirge of a waltz that is In the Middle of the Night.
But just too much of this isn't as captivating as those of us bowled over by her debut would have hoped.
Russell Baillie
